It's official, I'm a "Putney Painter"

I had a great painting session with my friends up in Putney this past Saturday. We painted a 15? year old boy that had such a great contemplative demeanor (and a cool nose). Richard started the day with a really unexpected announcement where he invited myself and Leigh Brady to be official Putney Painters. It's such a privilege to learn and paint with these people and this association is the icing on the cake -- I hope my paintings and character will be a reflection of the generosity that these amazing artists have shared.

Here is Nancy's start (about 50 minutes in I think). You can see my start over there on the left.

 Here is Richard's painting at about the third sitting. I love looking at his paintings close-up . . . he has an amazing economy of brushstrokes and his colors are always so pure and vibrant which breath life into his paintings.

Here is my painting about 3/4 of the way through. I kinda wish I would have just fixed a few things and stopped here. The grandparents of the boy wanted the painting and I thought it only right to take it to more of a finish.

Here is Nancy's painting at the end of the day. The biggest thing I learned (which Nancy does so well in the hair for example) is that in the dark areas (and especially the darkest darks), it is always better to plan ahead and carefully place the strokes and then leave them.

You need to make sure that you apply them in a way that leaves some of the canvas showing through. It creates a luminosity that works to your advantage, letting the semi-transparent darks sit into the background and the opaque and thicker paint jump to the front. This illusion is something that I haven't been keeping consistent (having both transparent and opaque darks) which hurts the illusion. To create these transparent strokes, you can use either a dry-brush approach or use thinned paint -- the trick is to use a bristle brush and use a lot of pressure when you make the stroke.

Here is my painting at the end of the day.